Melbourne Victory interim head coach Grant Brebner was left disappointed by his side’s performance in a loss to the Central Coast Mariners.
Marco Rojas twice gave Victory the lead at Jubilee Stadium on Monday, only for goals from Dylan Fox and Dylan Ruiz-Diaz to draw Central Coast level.
Having equalised in the 85th minute, Ruiz-Diaz found the winner four minutes later for the Mariners.
Speaking at his post-match news conference, Brebner discussed the performance and provided an update on injuries.
on the performance…
“It was disappointing for me on the night. I don’t think we really had too much rhythm to our play all night. We played in patches. We managed to counter-attack at times, we created some chances in the first half and later in the second half, but disappointing night at the office for us.”
on the finish to the game…
“Concentration, players switching off, not doing their jobs and we get punished, at this level you get punished. We know where we’re at in terms of the group of players we have and they have to understand that when you switch off, when you don’t do your jobs, you’re going to get punished and we did again tonight.”
on the players’ reaction…
“As you can imagine, they’re extremely disappointed and so they should be. It’s not a position we want to be in, it’s not a position we want to feel like this, but we’re in the position we’re in, we’ve got to get better. I’m not looking too far ahead, we’ve got two games and this group of players will finish the season so they’ve got to pick themselves up very quickly, as have the staff, and we’ve got to find a way to make sure that this doesn’t happen again on the weekend.”
on injuries…
“Andrew Nabbout rolled his ankle at training so therefore wasn’t available for tonight. Anthony Lesiotis, again, picked up an injury in training and Storm Roux has come off tonight with what I thought was a tight calf, but again during the game I didn’t really get time to have a look at that. We had three changes and then Marco picked up a little bit of cramp with a few minutes to go because he ran all night for us so three players injured and Marco with a bit of cramp.”
on Nabbout’s availability for Perth game…
“He was touch and go but this game came around a little bit too quick for him, so fully expect him to be available for the weekend and that’ll be a big plus for us because we certainly missed him tonight. Young Luis [Lawrie-Lattanzio] did a great job for us, but he needs a little bit of support around him.”
